Fatal Threat

by Marie Force

  Beginning on the far left side with the threat received by Nick’s office, she worked her way across the board, adding information about Peter’s murder, the people they’d interviewed, the odd timing of tell-all interviews from Nicoletta and Peter before he died. Using magnetic clips, she hung Peter’s autopsy photos while avoiding the temptation to study his litany of injuries once again.

  A throat cleared behind her. She turned to find Archie standing in the doorway.

  “Didn’t want to interrupt the master at work.”

  “No worries. What’ve you got?”

  He handed her a photograph that had been taken from the security video outside Peter’s building. “Raul has identified this guy as Gibson’s new friend.”

  “What do we know about him?”

  “I ran him through facial recognition and got a name, Dante Fields. He’s in our system with a long list of priors.” Archie handed her a printout. “We also got a confirmation from Lucy Kaul that she saw Fields with Peter.”

  Sam scanned the list of mostly misdemeanor counts ranging from assault to robbery.

  “I took the liberty of running his financials.” He gave her another sheet that showed an individual on the brink of ruin. His bank balances were under ten dollars, and his outstanding debt was in the hundreds of thousands.

  “He would’ve been ripe for the picking,” Sam said, her mind racing with the probability that he was the one who’d inflicted the torture on Peter.

  Archie gave her a third sheet of paper. “Local address. I’ve already requested a warrant to search his house.”

  “Great work, Archie. Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  “Where’s Raul now?”

  “I gave him a choice of going home or spending some time in protective custody. He wavered until I showed him the photos of what’d been done to Gibson. He chose lockup.”

  “That’s good. Appreciate you handling that.”

  He handed her one more piece of paper. “A printout of Gibson’s interview.”

  Sam looked down at it, conflicted by wanting to know what it said and not wanting to know. “I’m really sorry you got dragged into this.”

  “No need to apologize. You had nothing to do with it.”

  “Well, I did make the monumental mistake of marrying him.”

  Archie shrugged. “It’ll blow over when someone else does something that gets everyone talking.”

  “You’re being a remarkably good sport about having your personal business broadcast to the world.”

  “I’ve never been ashamed of the time we spent together, Sam. Why should I start now?”

  “That’s very generous of you.”

  “Besides,” he said with the charming grin that had attracted her in the first place, “I’m not the one who’s married. What does your husband think of the rumors?”

  “He was surprised I never mentioned you to him and had a few things to say about that. I reminded him that he never provided a list of his exes either.”

  “Good point,” Archie said, laughing. “Try not to worry. It’ll blow over in a day or two.”

  “I hope you’re right. Thanks again for the help with the case.”

  “That’s what I’m here for.” He waved as he left the room.

  Sam forced herself to take a moment, to read what had been written about her with her ex-husband as the primary source of the information. It rehashed their miscarriages as well as their acrimonious divorce and detailed her rebound fling with Archie. If the point had been to humiliate her, mission accomplished. But Peter would never have spoken willingly to the media about the miscarriages that had devastated him as much as they had her, which confirmed her theory that the details had been tortured out of him, and now she wanted to nail the guy who’d done it.

  Sam went to the door and yelled for Cruz and Gonzo.

  “You barked?” Cruz said when he came into the conference room.

  Sam glared at him. “We’ve got a lead on Peter’s possible executioner.” She gave them the rundown on what Archie had gotten from Raul.

  “Let’s go pick him up,” Gonzo said.

  “I want full backup on this.” She picked up the phone that sat in the middle of the conference-room table, dialed Malone’s extension and asked him to come into the conference room.

  “Be right there,” he said.

  The captain arrived a few minutes later with Chief Farnsworth in tow.

  “We may have a break in the Gibson case.” Thankful that no one mentioned the latest gossip, Sam updated them on the information Archie had provided and made her request for a coordinated effort to bring in Fields.

  Malone picked up the phone and made a couple of calls that soon had the conference room full of SWAT and Tactical Response team members. Assistant US Attorney Faith Miller and Avery Hill joined them, as well. When everyone was in place, he gestured for Sam to brief the team.

  She began with Peter’s autopsy photos, which she removed from the board to pass around, noting the way each officer reacted to what’d been done to him. “We believe that Dante Fields is the one who tortured Peter Gibson to death. Furthermore, we suspect someone else hired him to do the job. We need to bring Fields in alive and get him to roll on the person who hired him. That’s the person we want. I’m willing to deal with Fields to get to the bigger fish.”

  “What makes you think he was hired to do the job?” Faith asked.

  Sam went over the information Archie had uncovered about Fields’s dire financial situation as well as his long list of priors. “He’s a seasoned criminal with nothing to lose who struck up a friendship with Peter in the month before he was tortured to death. Information that could’ve only come from Peter was used to threaten my family, along with the suspicious timing of the tell-all interview from Nick’s mother. Peter also gave an interview that included information he never would’ve talked about if his life hadn’t been in danger. It all adds up to something stinky in the nation’s capital.”

  “You think it’s all related,” Faith said.

  “I do.” Sam took a moment to get her thoughts in order. “Roll with me here for a minute.” She focused on Faith but spoke to the room at large. Before she’d gotten together with Nick, the thought of her personal life crossing into her professional life would’ve appalled her. Now it happened with appalling regularity, and she’d learned to live with that new reality. “Ever since Nick became vice president, his popularity has soared, eclipsing that of every other public figure in the country, this despite the fact that many people feel that he shouldn’t have the power he does, a heartbeat from the presidency, without having actually been elected. So while he enjoys an extraordinary approval rating, there’s a small but vocal faction of the electorate that despises him. The Secret Service has reported an uptick in credible threats against him.” Sam swallowed hard. “Despite his popularity, Nick has received twice as many death threats as former vice president Gooding had by this time last year.”

  “I had no idea,” Farnsworth said, seeming truly amazed. “It seems like the whole country is captivated by the two of you.”

  “I believe that captivation is actually feeding the frenzy of whoever is behind this.” Sam went over to the board and pointed to the far left side where she’d recorded the threat against their family. “One word stood out in the letter that Nick’s office received. Humility.” It still pained her that it hadn’t occurred to her right away that there might be a connection to Peter. Perhaps if she’d put that together sooner... No. Don’t go there. No sense trying to rewrite history. “My ex-husband used to tell me all the time that I needed to get some. I didn’t immediately put that together, but once I did, it led directly to him, which I believe was the intent.”

  Faith held up a hand to stop her. “You think one word in the threat letter you
r husband’s office received was intended to turn the focus on Peter Gibson?”

  “Yes, I do. I believe they wanted us to find his dead body. I don’t believe they intended to have to torture him to get the information they needed.”

  “What do you mean?” Avery asked.

  “The mistake they made was in thinking Peter hated me enough to give up anything they wanted. What they failed to realize is that in his twisted mind, he loved me too much to ever give them anything that could be used to actually harm me.”

  “But he actually tried to harm you on more than one occasion,” Gonzo said.

  “Yes, he did, but to him it wasn’t about hating me. It was about loving me and not wanting anyone else to have me. Granted, it was a sick, twisted, perverted sort of love, but that was love to him.” After a pause, she continued. “They wanted something they could put in that letter to Nick’s office that would lead investigators to Peter. I think initially they were planning to pin the whole thing on him. Apparently, he refused to give them something that could be used against me, which led them to torture him until he finally caved and gave them something they could use. By then he was all but dead.”

  “I don’t get what their endgame was,” Malone said.

  “When you add in the interview that Nick’s mother was probably paid big bucks to give that attempted to discredit our marriage and his paternity plus the info in Peter’s interview before he was killed, it all adds up to a conspiracy to cause trouble for me and mostly for Nick.”

  “I have to be honest with you, Lieutenant,” Malone said. “I think it’s a stretch. Gibson was no choirboy. It’s very possible his death had nothing at all to do with you.”

  “Yes,” Sam said with a sigh. She’d expected the pushback on her theory. “It’s possible. But I think it had everything to do with me.” And she hated that. “We haven’t uncovered anything in his recent life that would’ve led to torture. Other than a possible connection to McTavish’s gambling ring that ended with McTavish’s arrest, from what we were able to piece together, he went to work, spent time with his colleague who wasn’t really his girlfriend but was definitely a fuck buddy, played poker and went to ball games with his male friends. From all reports he was trying to turn things around after a very rough couple of years. While I won’t go so far as to suggest he’d found religion, it did seem that he’d finally realized how lucky he was not to be rotting away in prison and was trying to make a real change. Perhaps seeing McTavish go down hard on charges finally scared him straight.”

  “My impression matches the lieutenant’s,” Cruz said.

  Sam glanced at him, hoping he knew how much she appreciated his support.

  “We’ve spent every night this week trying to find something in his recent dealings that would’ve provoked this sort of murder,” Carlucci said. “There’s nothing.”

  “Our investigation into the threat against the vice president has also gone cold,” Avery said. “We’ve dug into every threat that’s been received by us and the Secret Service since he took office and haven’t been able to make any connections to this one or to the Islamic faction that was tied to an earlier threat against Nelson. That didn’t pan out in this case.”

  “That doesn’t mean the connections don’t exist,” Malone said.

  “Granted,” Avery said, “but I believe the lieutenant’s theory is worth investigating further.”

  “Beginning with picking up Fields,” Sam said. “I have a feeling he’s going to be the key to everything if we can get him to roll on the others.”

  “I’ve learned to trust the lieutenant’s feelings on these matters,” Gonzo said.

  “I tend to agree,” Farnsworth added.

  “Let’s go get him,” Malone said.

  Despite his misgivings, Sam could always count on her captain’s support, and she had a feeling she was going to need the support of the entire department before this case was closed.

  * * *

  THEY PARKED ON Branch Avenue Southeast, around the corner from the Park Drive address they’d been given. It took about fifteen minutes to get everyone into position. Vests were donned, SWAT and Tactical Response teams were readied, and EMS was called in as a precaution.

  After Sam received notification from the squad commanders that their people were ready, she gave the order to go in, leading the group of four that approached the front of the house. Cruz, Gonzo and Hill went in with her.

  She pounded on the door. “MPD. Open up.”

  No answer.

  She pounded again. “MPD, Mr. Fields. We’d like to speak to you.”

  A shout sounded from behind the house. “He’s running!”

  Sam bounded down the stairs and took off running on Park Drive, toward Fort Stanton, catching up to Fields as he came out of the backyards.

  He made the mistake of looking backward, and Sam played the advantage, pouring on the coal and grabbing him. An approaching car wasn’t able to stop in time and the front corner connected with Sam’s hip, propelling her and Fields forward. As they rolled across the hood of the car, Sam made sure to keep her tight grip on Fields. They landed hard in the street on the other side of the car.

  “Oh my God!” the driver cried as she jumped out of the car. “I couldn’t stop!”

  Sam gritted her teeth against the pain of torn elbows and knees while using all her strength and weight to keep Fields pinned to the street.

  “Christ, Sam,” Gonzo said when he caught up. “Are you all right?”

  Her hip hurt like a son of a bitch, but that would have to wait. “Yeah. You got him?”

  Gonzo cuffed Fields and recited his rights before hauling him to his feet.

  Sam noticed he was bleeding from his forehead.

  “Crazy motherfucking bitch,” he spit at Sam.

  “You shouldn’t have run,” she said as she rose—painfully—to her feet.

  “You’re bleeding,” Freddie said, taking her by the arm. “You need the paramedics.”

  “I need to get back to HQ to question him.”

  “He’ll be there when you get there.”

  Sam let Freddie lead her around the corner to where the bus sat with paramedics at the ready.

  “She went over the top of a car and landed in the street,” Freddie said.

  “Other than the obvious, Lieutenant, any other injuries?” one of the paramedics asked. Another tended to the cut on Fields’s forehead.

  “No.” Her hip hurt like a motherfucker, but she wasn’t telling them that. She grimaced as they cleaned the cuts on her elbows and knees.

  “That fat fucking cow landed right on top of me,” Fields said. “I think she broke my ribs.”

  “You wish,” Sam said. “Take him downtown. Straight to lockup.”

  “I need the hospital.”

  “Tell it to the judge.”

  “I’m gonna fucking sue your ass.”

  “Go for it.”

  It took fifteen minutes Sam didn’t have for the paramedics to patch her up and send her on her way. She handed the keys to Freddie, happy to let him drive her to HQ.

  “You’re walking funny,” he said.

  “You’re gonna be walking funny if you make a thing of it.”

  “What’d you hurt?”

  “Nothing besides the obvious.”

  “Liar.”

  “Shut up.” By the time she was in the car, she’d broken into a cold sweat from the pain of her injuries. “Fucking hell.”

  “What now?”

  “Bridesmaid. With bandages.”

  “Ouch,” Freddie said, wincing.

  Gonzo waved them down. “I need a ride.”

  “Hop in,” Sam said.

  “She’s hurt worse than advertised,” Freddie said.

  “I told y
ou to shut up!”

  “Since when do I do what you tell me to?”

  “Yeah, that’s becoming a bigger problem all the time,” Sam said. “Remind me of that at annual review time, Gonzo.”

  He snorted out a laugh from the backseat. “I’ll make a note.”

  “Whatever,” Freddie said. “You guys don’t scare me.”

  “Remember when he was scared shitless of us?” Gonzo said. “Those were the good old days.”

  “I can’t figure out where we went so wrong with him,” Sam said. “He was such a nice boy.”

  “Until I started hanging around with the likes of you two.”

  “Is he insulting us?” Gonzo asked. “I can’t tell.”

  “I think he might be. Add that to the list for review time too.”

  “Writing it down as we speak.”

  “Still not scared.” Freddie looked over at her. “You’re sure you don’t need the ER?”

  “I’m positive that if you drive us anywhere other than HQ, you’re fired.”

  “This would be a good time to do what she says,” Gonzo added.

  “I’m doing it. Do you see me heading for HQ and not the ER?”

  “Drive faster,” Sam said. “We’ve got shit to do.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  WITHOUT HER HAVING to tell him, Freddie went straight to the morgue entrance. They went inside, and Sam sent them on to the pit to make sure Fields was being processed as quickly as possible. “I’ll be right there.” She ducked into the morgue and found Lindsey in her office. Sam closed the door.

  “What’s up?” Lindsey asked.

  Sam began to unbutton and unzip her shorts.

  “I think you’re gorgeous, Sam, but I’m taken,” Lindsey said with a cheeky grin.

  Sam rolled her eyes. “I need you to look at my hip.”

  “You might’ve led with that.” She got up, came around the desk and turned Sam to maximize the light. “Holy shit. What did you do now?”